The fifteen that Gods would stop to watch

Important schedule change announced at the end

This article has been on the anvil for some time and despite my weak shoulder, I have hammered it through. My selection is just a starting point to get a comprehensive user response to determine an all-time World team.

I have selected a team of 15 players. I have also made an attempt to select eleven players for the 8 locations that I expect or would like Test matches to be played at.

I have taken the major decision that this will be a team of specialists. No all-rounder, however great he is, will be considered for his all-round skills. They will be evaluated on their specialist skills and if they qualify, and in this case let me add that two qualify, they will be selected. This may be at variance with other strategies and I am ready to stand by my decision because I believe that specialists win matches.

My fifteen consists of 7 batsmen, 1 wicket-keeper and 7 bowlers. For the playing XI, I expect to select 6 out of the 7 batsmen; the keeper stays on everywhere and 4 from the 7 bowlers. This will give me the flexibility to select suitable bowlers based on the expected conditions and the way the bowlers performed in these locations in their careers. I need more flexibility in the bowler selections than batsmen selection.

I am willing to compromise on batting positions in order to maintain the team balance. I also believe that a top quality early middle order player would be good enough to open. And a great no.3 would bat equally well at no.6. I will not be a slave to preconceived notions and dogmas.

I have selected my XV. The reader may not agree with that set of players. That is democracy at work. Instead of raking me over the coals for my (non-)selections, the readers can now have their voice heard by giving their own fifteen. All of us have a single vote each and this will be truly Vox populi.

My seven batsmen, and the chosen wicket-keeper, are shown below, in alphabetical order.

The qualities I have looked for have been listed below. All of them would walk into their own Team XVs. Let me also confirm that Sobers has been considered purely as a batsman and his bowling skills would be a bonus. Any more details are not necessary at this stage. More than 72000 runs at display here at 60+ average.

The wicket-keeper position was very easy. There was only one candidate: Adam Gilchrist. As my recent article on wicket-keepers showed, he is head and shoulders above the others. A great keeper, no weaknesses and a truly match-winning batsman. If there is a keeper or two ahead of him on keeping ability, again an unproven purely subjective view, the run difference per innings would be of the order of 25.

Ambrose, Hadlee, Marshall, McGrath, Muralitharan, Warne, Wasim Akram

Again I have looked for qualities listed below. These have been considered as individual bowlers and their ability to bowl together as a pair has not come in for consideration. Again, let me confirm that Hadlee has been considered purely as a bowler and his batting skills would be a bonus. There is no need to provide any justifications for these selections. 3700+ Test wickets at an average of 22 is enough justification.

- Variety (Pace, seam usage, left-handed swing, spin options)
- Match-winning ability
- Top strike rates (Even spinners below 60)
- Injury-free careers
- Ability to bowl tightly, when needed (Ambrose, Hadlee, McGrath)
- Ability to defend a total of 100 in the fourth innings and
- Ability to dismiss a team for a sub-100 total on the opening day.

I have done a Team rating which is

Average of Batting averages of the top-six batsmen
+
12.5% of The wicket-keeper index as outlined in my recent article
(Based on Dismissals, Dismissals per Test, Byes conceded per Test,
Runs scored and Runs per innings)
+
80.0-(Average of Bowling averages of the four specialist bowlers)

The only table which will be presented indicates the selection of the playing XI in the selected 8 countries.

Location

Avg / Idx

Aus

Eng

Ind

Nzl

Pak

Saf

Slk

Win

Bradman

8

99.94

Bradman

Bradman

Bradman

Bradman

Bradman

Bradman

Bradman

Bradman

Hobbs

8

56.95

Hobbs

Hobbs

Hobbs

Hobbs

Hobbs

Hobbs

Hobbs

Hobbs

Lara

8

52.89

Lara

Lara

Lara

Lara

Lara

Lara

Lara

Lara

Sobers

8

57.78

Sobers

Sobers

Sobers

Sobers

Sobers

Sobers

Sobers

Sobers

Richards

6

50.24

Richards

Richards

Richards

Richards

Richards

Richards

Tendulkar

6

55.08

Tendulkar

Tendulkar

Tendulkar

Tendulkar

Tendulkar

Tendulkar

Gavaskar

4

51.12

Gavaskar

Gavaskar

Gavaskar

Gavaskar

.

Gilchrist

8

82.50

Gilchrist

Gilchrist

Gilchrist

Gilchrist

Gilchrist

Gilchrist

Gilchrist

Gilchrist

.

McGrath

8

21.64

McGrath

McGrath

McGrath

McGrath

McGrath

McGrath

McGrath

McGrath

Ambrose

5

20.99

Ambrose

Ambrose

Ambrose

Ambrose

Ambrose

Marshall

5

20.95

Marshall

Marshall

Marshall

Marshall

Marshall

Akram

4

23.62

Akram

Akram

Akram

Akram

Murali

4

22.72

Murali

Murali

Murali

Murali

Warne

4

25.42

Warne

Warne

Warne

Warne

Hadlee

2

22.30

Hadlee

Hadlee

88

Batting

62.29

62.15

62.15

62.15

62.29

62.15

62.29

62.15

W-K

10.31

10.31

10.31

10.31

10.31

10.31

10.31

10.31

Bowling

57.41

57.75

57.77

57.43

57.09

57.75

57.76

58.43

Team

130.02

130.21

130.23

129.89

129.70

130.21

130.36

130.88

Bradman, Hobbs, Lara and Sobers are the batsmen who have been selected for all the 8 locations.Gilchrist is the wicket-keeper in all the teams.McGrath is the only automatic selection amongst all bowlers.Gavaskar has been selected in countries where he has done well and there is need for his skill-sets. He will, of course, open in these matches.Tendulkar will open in the 4 locations where Gavaskar is not playing. He has impeccable technique and I am sure he would do an excellent job opening the innings.

Readers can give their selections by following these guidelines.

- You can select 11 to 15 players.
- 16th and onwards players will be rejected.
- If you select 10 or fewer players or there is no wicket-keeper, the entry will be rejected.
- I have included a few sample comments. I will be pragmatic about it since the content is more important than form.
- However my task will become easier if you maintain format especially because I have to do some cut-and-paste operations to index these submissions.
- Reader identity is desirable but not mandatory. Suppose your selection matches the all-Readers XV, "James Thompson" would sound much better than "Lord-of-Lords".
- In general any selection should be acceptable. My general comment is that your selected players should have a very good chance of selection to their own country XVs.
- I will have no problems if you select Boycott or Bedi but if you select Blewett or Boje, two randomly picked names, I would conclude that you are mocking the selection process.
- If you do not select Bradman, fine, that is your choice. But then you may find your bowlers bowling at him!!!
- If you give duplicate entries, the latest one, if it passes the above criteria, will replace the earlier one.
- Do not give two XVs. I am asking for ONE XV and not two equal strength XIs to play matches between these teams. No problems if you give a First XV/XI and a second XV/XI and ask me take the First one.
- Do not restrict yourself to any period. Your selection will not be accepted.
- Please read all comments. At least read all my responses since the answer to your question might be there.

Justification on your selection, comments on my selections, comments on other readers' selections et al will be fine but not essential. These will be published as received. In general most comments will be published with least amount of response from me. This is the perfect article for that much-needed luxury for me.

Your comments containing the selections should reach me on or before 31 December, 2012. Further analysis articles will appear during December. I will refer to this article in those ones too. I will process your comments and come out with a final wrap-up summary article on or around 15 January, 2013. The Readers' XV, based on an analysis of the readers' selections, will also be posted in that article in which I will also come out with a second XV/XI.

You could share the link of this article with your friends and acquaintances in order to can get more selections.

The ball has been served and is in your court now. Have fun!!!

My last article elicited very few comments. Understandable since that was a bowler-centric one. However, two related and pertinent questions for the period 1985-2012, for which I have no answers, have to be raised. We have to keep in mind the fact that, in just over three days of play in the Brisbane Test, 3 wickets were disallowed because of subsequent detection of no balls. And all were expensive transgressions.

The first is "How many wickets were lost because of bowler bowling no balls?".
The second one is "How many wickets were illegal because of undetected no balls?".

A few interesting statistical moves at the end of the Brisbane Test (not the "highest score made on a week-end south of Equator" type of tidbits).

- Kallis has crossed the 57 mark. He is sixth in the table, has crossed Hobbs' mark and is now within sight of Sobers, if he continues his excellent form. Hammond's 58.x might not be tough to overtake in this series.
- Clarke has re-joined the 50-average club, which now has 33 members. What a move? More than 2 runs in a single innings.
- Amla has gone above 50, after spending a few Tests away from this mark. Smith and Pietersen are poised to return to the nice number if they have decent showings.

Since I feel most of the responses would be in soon and as requested by a few readers, I have decided to close the acceptance of entries on 7 December and come out with the follow-up article on or around 15 December.

Hard to improve on your 7 batsmen Ananth, except I'd have Dravid instead of Lara and Sutcliffe rather than Gavaskar. But I think they'd all struggle outside the Subcontinent against the best attack from outside your XV: Holding, Garner, Roberts, and Lillee.

Posted by swarzi
on (December 15, 2012, 14:15 GMT)

Ananth, the Gods have been here in the last two years trotting around the globe watching test cricket. They said that they had been hearing about cricket magicians - with the bat, with the ball and in the field; so they came to see and make their own assessments. They said that they were however only prepared to watch performances that provided awesome entertainment. Without calling any names, they said that there are one or two whom they may leave their busy schedules to come to watch; but what they saw from some whose names that they had heard so much about, if what they saw from them after watching for two years, in (10+) test matches, nearly 20 innings, they are convinced that such players were grossly overrated. They said that they had their fifteen players whom they would have always stopped to watch, but none of those whom they saw for the past two years is on that list - however, there some very exciting prospects who've come close - they may make the list in the future.

Posted by Dinesh
on (December 15, 2012, 10:19 GMT)

So this is how it must have felt during the Days of Timeless test.

I definitely think this match will yield a result. Things happen overnight in Subcontinent on the last tow days of a match.

And finally a word on Dhoni and Kohli, totally out of their skin, far removed from their usual way of playing. They have put India in a position from where they can win this match.

Posted by Gerry_the_Merry
on (December 15, 2012, 2:12 GMT)

Dr.Talha, agreed. But let me explain. If I were to be given a choice of one player between Tendulkar and Amarnath for an Indian all time XI, I would select Tendulkar eyes closed. Various factors like productivity, versatility etc. matter.

But, if I were to select one of the two to face Marshall, Holding, Garner and Roberts in Barbados, and the rest of the batting line up was not very strong, I would select Amarnath ten times out of ten. I wonder if anyone else who has seen both, as I have, would feel differently. 1990s Tendulkar fans would feel differently of course, since values like extreme courage aganist quicks have got diminished.

Cant explain this further.

Posted by Dr.talha
on (December 14, 2012, 7:52 GMT)

@Gerry.
I think at the end of the day we have to look at the overall record, rather than picking up series & evaluating the player.

E.g Ponting scored 17 runs in 3 tests at an average of 3.4 in india in 1998. Even before that struggled in india. It was in his 5th series in india when he managed to get his 1st 100.
And his last 6 years, not once has he averaged 50 in a calender year. Which is pretty ordinary by his standards.

Another e.g is Miandad. He sruggled against WI in his first 3 series. It was in his 4th series in 88 when he batted well.

But does this mean that both Javed & Ricky wont be selected for their countries all-time X1.

Amarnath though not very attractive to watch, is one of the very few players of sub-continent whose AWAY average is over 50.

His 100's at Perth,Antigua,Trinidad & Sydney were absolute gem.

Posted by Murray Archer
on (December 14, 2012, 6:22 GMT)

ok ok so Ranji & the whatever number and next Nawabs of Pataudi I'll exclude.
Not to say they were not worthy of their reputations !!!!!

The BIG story, to at least me, about Indian cricket is the overcoming of disbelief in self.
To me, this has seemed an ongoing story.... I do not want to get deeply (or even at all) into this......

Only reason I mention; is that some for India (as from everywhere else too) have had self belief.
To me, they're the Indian (and all others too) standout players.

Posted by Murray Archer
on (December 14, 2012, 1:05 GMT)

@ Dr.Tahla

While I'll certainly keep right out of any debate about an alltime Indian side. I'd like to just say that I am surprised no-one ever includes Armanath's father.
In terms of gaining Indian cricket world wide acceptance, and appreciation, he surely can only be challenged by Merchant, Hazare, Kapil, Sunni and SRT ?

Posted by Gerry_the_Merry
on (December 13, 2012, 12:19 GMT)

Dr.Talha, Amarnath is deserving of serious consideration, but while he was a rock in the mid '80s for 4-5 years, averaging in the high 50s, it included the terrible series against West Indies at home in 1983-84 and 1987-88, in one of which he averaged 0.16. Also until his great Pak series in 1982-83, he was struggling to keep his place, and on his previous visit to Pakistan, in 1977-78, where also India was badly beaten, Amarnath was hit on the head by Imran a couple of times, and had a lot of trouble with the hook shot, falling on to his wicket often. He improved beyond recognition from 1982-83, but his overall career stats carry the front loaded drag. Also there is insufficient vintage content to impress Shrikanthk.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anantha NarayananAnantha spent the first half of his four-decade working career with corporates like IBM, Shaw Wallace, NCR, Sime Darby and the Spinneys group in IT-related positions. In the second half, he has worked on cricket simulation, ratings, data mining, analysis and writing, amongst other things. He was the creator of the Wisden 100 lists, released in 2001. He has written for ESPNcricinfo and CastrolCricket, and worked extensively with Maruti Motors, Idea Cellular and Castrol on their performance ratings-related systems. He is an armchair connoisseur of most sports. His other passion is tennis, and he thinks Roger Federer is the greatest sportsman to have walked on earth.